The Whole Thing Stinks!

Many years ago, I used to know a man called Harry Bart, he was getting on a bit,
in his sixties, I think, he’d been a merchant seaman, had a rugged disposition and
gap-toothed grin, he was active in the local civil defence league. I don’t know what
he would have done had Russia lowered the cold war temperature to freezing and
invaded, he drove a Ford Orion, not a tank!

Harry helped us organise a local Read more »

Weighty Matters

You’re in trouble if you step on talking scales and they say “help”. Those who
go through life in a sylph-like state with a metabolism which, if bottled and sold,
would create turmoil in the markets, challenging and probably eclipsing Google and
Facebook, seem strangely aloof from the struggle: “I’m wiry by nature,” they say, “I
eat what I like, it doesn’t show-up on me.” They have a relationship to scales such as
honest, law-abiding folk, have with the police; nothing to fear, happy they are there,
just in case they might be needed. For the rest of us, it’s a battle, sometimes a war:
Temptation against restraint, gluttony versus well-being, desire challenging self-
control.

Cakes: They’re all around us, everywhere, Read more »

Stand up and be Counted

Ken Dodd is the comedian’s comedian, Michael McIntyre, the face of stand-up on BBC, Max Miller, the “cheeky chappie”, Jackie Mason, the rabbi turned laughter-maker – all have or had one thing in common: the ability to stand directly in front of an audience with nothing but their wits about them, and make them laugh.

There has been a renaissance in stand-up, like teenage girls speculating about their love-lives, everyone appears to be doing it – and why not? For years gifted purveyors of jokes in pubs were lucky to benefit from the next round, now the Pub Landlord and his Read more »

Under Pressure

We’ve all heard of the hair that broke the camel’s back, I don’t know whose hair it was or how it reached the camel – maybe a gust of wind blew it from a chic hairdressers in Mayfair to Cairo, perhaps it was one of Cheryl Cole’s or Wayne Rooney’s; no probably not Wayne’s, for obvious reasons. Whoever’s it was, however it got there, I know the feeling!

There is only so much you can take, not the trifling irritants – scalding yourself in the shower when your hand slips on the tap, the toast falling on the floor in the morning marmalade-side up, treading in, well, you know what-on the pavement on your way to work, standing on the train, crushed between the least attractive passengers in the carriage, each displaying a rabbit-like twitch of the nose as the mild but putrid smell from your shoe reaches them, Read more »

RED AND BLACK: A NEW LOW FOR BRITISH TV

The stakes are nothing – other than your credibility, the potential gain, £1 million; the
audience woops it us, as if they’re at a latter-day Nuremberg Rally, the something for
nothing brigade are at it again. No need to start a riot, go looting or play the lottery,
Ant & Dec are back with Simon Cowell’s new downmarket vehicle, Red or Black.

I’ve never seen such a travesty of a show, its’ aim is pure and simple: greed. Haven’t
they heard, it’s one of the seven deadly sins! Narrow a thousand anxious nobodies
down to one at random, give that person a Read more »